Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems have been proposed for the tracking of medical supplies in hospitals. Such systems typically involve one or more readers and many RFID tags, each of which is associated with, such as attached to, items being monitored or tracked. In the case of medicaments, single-use medical devices, and implantable medical devices, RFID tags are typically affixed to or made part of the medicament container, e.g., medicine bottle, or medical device container, e.g., disposable packaging for the stent or orthopedic implant.
RFID tags take the form of integrated circuits, with associated antennas, that encode unique serial numbers. The reader is generally in a fixed location or mobile with an operator, and items with RFID tags are detected when they enter or leave the electromagnetic field of the reader. For example, RFID readers are often placed at multiple distributed locations associated with a supply chain in order to monitor the items as they passes through manufacturing, transportation, distribution, to consumption. Each reader captures the RFID tag serial numbers of each item as it enters the reader's interrogation field, and data collected from all readers facilitate item tracking over time, through the chain.
Tracking using RFID-based systems and also tradition systems based on bar code readers generally deteriorates as the items being tracked approach the time and place of consumption, e.g., use, implantation, exhaustion, or disposal. It is therefore difficult to trace a particular item's full history. Part of the problem is that the individuals that are directly involved with the consumption of the item, e.g., medical care professionals, are usually, and justifiably, more concerned with medical care delivery than the integrity of the supply chain data.
For example, the most common practice in accounting for product use and disposition is based on manual data entry, sometimes assisted by barcode scans to obtain a product identifier such as a stock keeping unit (SKU) number or the universal product number (UPN) of the item. These manual procedures record the usage and disposition of supplies. The data entry often must be performed under time constraints that do not allow verification of the data entered, however. Consequently, error rates can be high and data quality is often poor.
Moreover, often responsibilities concerning reporting of item consumption may be made more difficult or confusing because of the presence of legacy systems, which may or may not be compatible with the RFID tracking systems. Thus, it is not uncommon that the same event must be reported to multiple supply chain systems due to incompatibility between those systems.
Further, these legacy tracking systems often do not track each item uniquely. The reason is that the systems usually track based on the barcode scanned UPN of the item. The product identifier, e.g., UPN) is only unique to the type of item and maybe a lot or batch. The UPN does not uniquely identify each item. In contrast, RFID tags each have unique numbers. Thus, when associated with an item, that item can be uniquely tracked all the way to the point of consumption, and possibly beyond. However, this per item tracking is inconsistent with the legacy systems that only track via a product identifier, for example.